Operations at an unassuming office space on the edge of downtown Danville serve as a prime example of the wide range of businesses and international connections that the small, historic San Ramon Valley town is home to.
In this case, that includes an AI-based defense technology startup seeking to “build Africa’s sovereign defense-industrial base” and celebrating progress toward that goal this summer.
Terra Industries, headquartered at 675 Hartz Ave., made a series of announcements last month that included the appointment of a former SpaceX executive and millions in additional funding that is set to expand its presence far beyond the small town’s borders.
The company announced Aug. 17 that it had received an additional $18 million in funding from its investors, bringing the total seed round funding to $52 million, which is set to help fund its expansion to a new London office that will offer “direct access to institutions that shape global defense and infrastructure markets”.
The additional funding came from “angel investor” Grant Gordon, Norleo Space Investments, and a number of venture capital companies that were existing investors.
“Critical infrastructure across the Global South is best protected by systems designed for these environments and built in the regions they protect,” co-founder Nathan Nwachuku said in the company’s press release in August. “This funding lets us scale that work and deepen our manufacturing base. It also puts us in the rooms where global defense decisions are made.”
Just two years after Nwachuku and co-founder Maxwell Maduka launched the autonomous defense company in 2024, they announced earlier this year that Terra Industries is poised to open “Africa’s largest drone factory” in Ghana by the end of the year.
That will mark the company’s second manufacturing plant, with drones produced by its existing plant in Nigeria already in use across the continent.
“Terra’s technology is already deployed to protect power plants, mines, and other nationally critical assets valued at approximately $11 billion across multiple African countries,” company officials said in the Aug. 17 press release.
Two more announcements from the company ensued in the following days and weeks: The appointment of former SpaceX executive Ben MacWilliams as VP of strategy on Aug. 19, then the launch of a commercial division “to secure the industrial base of the Global South” on Friday.
“Government and military work will always be central to Terra,” Nwachuku said Friday. “But the commercial division gives us a constant flywheel of partnerships across industries, and it makes us a stronger business, because it puts our technology to work for the companies actually building infrastructure across the Global South.”
MacWilliams, formerly director of Starlink market access across Africa for SpaceX, offered his endorsement of the founders and Terra Industries as “a transformational company with deep technical talent, a bold vision, and real traction.”
For his part, Nwachuku said MacWilliams’ previous experience would be crucial to the company’s expansion and navigation with government regulators.
“The next phase for us at Terra is getting our technology to governments that need it,” Nwachuku said on Aug. 19. “That means licenses, regulators, and relationships across dozens of markets at once.”
Those latter challenges are one source of common ground between the international defense technology company and the town’s own government officials, who are often at odds with the state over recent housing law changes that limit their discretion in approving new housing projects that are often criticized as failing to conform with Danville’s historic, small town character.
The startup’s other connections to the town are not immediately clear, with no response to a request for comment as of Monday morning.
